Minimum wage: Harm to businesses or workers?

Whom will minimum-wage hike hurt?

City Council President Todd Gloria wants to raise the minimum-wage from the current $8 per hour to $13.09, by 2017, a 64 percent increase. Who will be hurt and who helped can be argued among one-armed economists endlessly.

Less than 1 percent of full-time workers in California receive the current minimum wage, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The minimum wage in reality is a learning wage that most people receive for less than year of starting work. But if Todd Gloria is truly open to input, he might ask the people of San Diego what they think if his rationale were applied the gasoline they buy. I bought 20 gallons at Costco for $4.09 a gallon. A 64 percent increase would make it $6.70 a gallon or $134 a tank. At $134 a tank do you think more or less gasoline would be bought? Intuitively, do you think businesses would hire more or fewer people when the learning wage is increased by 64 percent?

Who are the true beneficiaries of a minimum-wage increase if not those just starting out and who most hurt?

Fred Schnaubelt

San Diego

Not raising wage is exploitation

The proposed increase of San Diego’s minimum wage to $13.09 per hour over the next three years is creditable, but still fails to meet the federal requirements for a typical family. Today, this requirement works out to be about $20 per hour to pay rent, and say, child care for one child.

I am sure there will be the usual howl of rage at this proposal, with the prediction that it will drive people out of business. Historically, such predictions have been made with monotonous regularity, ever since 1949 when the wage was 75 cents per hour, and have always been proved to be false.

I have little sympathy for such prophets of doom. Look at it this way: if you have people working for you who cannot make enough money to live on, your business plan is really based on exploiting other people’s pain and suffering. This is not much of a plan to present with a straight face to our society.

Sorab K. Ghandhi

Escondido

San Miguel fire board needs new members

San Miguel fire district problems highlighted in a U-T Watchdog report (“Fire district finances probed,” April 24) and an editorial (“Still more funny business at San Miguel,” April 25) may hopefully encourage residents to run for the district’s fire board in November’s election.

Firefighters or their relatives and friends still form a majority of the board. They were elected when the fire employees’ union financially dominated the election process. The fire union was acting in its own self-interest. The board should reflect the diversity and needs of the community as a whole, not one particular interest group. The filing period to run in the November election opens in mid-July for four weeks. Volunteers are needed to step forward.

Robert Perry

El Cajon

No raise for school workers in 10 years

Due to layoffs, district employees lost health care, homes and working wages. Remaining workers took reductions in pay in the form of furlough days, a freeze in salary step increases, reduced hours and months.

These cuts resulted in a 14 percent reduction in wages overall. District workers have not received a raise for at least 10 years.

The 7 percent from the district in the school year 2012-2013 was not a raise. That money was a partial return of a salary restoration.

Eddie Stewart

Lemon Grove

Balboa Park shuttle — what shuttle?

My wife and I recently attempted to visit the show at the Museum of Art in Balboa Park.

We purchased tickets for $20 each online. I am elderly and handicapped. We tried to drive as close as possible to the museum to avoid excessive walking. The new traffic pattern does not allow access without at least one long block of walking each way from the closest drop-off point.

We then parked in a lower lot in the handicapped area, only to wait and wait for the shuttle to show up. It never did show. Apparently the shuttle does not go to all parking lots with handicapped parking spaces. Unbelievable.

The overall effect is to make the park and the exhibits inaccessible for the elderly and handicapped.

I thought the park was for all people, not just the young and spry. We pay taxes also.

Gary Washington

San Diego

Those freeway signs are distracting

Did the state intend the irony of using large distracting electronic signs on the freeways to warn people against distracted driving — or did they just blunder into it?